Steel Magnolias

Reviewed by Holly Bartges

The beauty of live theatre is that it’s live. No robots involved, unless, of course, the play is about robots. Bloopers aren’t erased to fill in the cracks for a later time. The unexpected possibilities always stand in the wings waiting for an entrance. When the entrance comes unexpectedly, the expertise of the actors separates the wheat from the chaff, and the audience gets to experience how the human beings behind the actor behind the character treats surprises thrown at their feet.

From top left, clockwise: Sally Clodfelter Theresa Adams, Terry Ann Watts, Carol Rust, Deidre O’Connor, Kristin Fuhrmann Clark in Steel Magnolias

So it was at Miners Alley Playhouse Saturday night for their second performance of Steel Magnolias. An actor struggling with illness found it necessary to leave the stage unexpectedly only seconds after the story began, leaving Theresa Adams playing Annelle Dupay Desoto on stage to fend for herself. Fend she did. Shy, frightened, nervous, desperate, hoping against hope she will be hired in the beauty saloon, Annelle did what most people would do.

She looked around the saloon, played tenuously with cans of hair spray, shyly flirted with the audience, touched things she wasn’t sure she should be touching, and provided a stint of business not included in the script and certainly not rehearsed. Although at the time the audience didn’t know what was happening, Adams kept her character wrapped snugly around her. The stint so well performed it should be incorporated into the show. Endearing, Adams displayed the essence of her character in full regalia. A spontaneous moment on stage begging to be shared with all audiences.

Steel Magnolias, Robert Harling’s beloved play nestled in Truvy’s Beauty Salon in Chinquapin, Louisiana. A social cocoon for six women, close friends, who get their hair done and nails manicured, playing out their emotional needs bickering, griping, teasing their ridicules, sniping about and to each other. They’re friends. They rely on each other and need each other.

Under mysterious circumstances, Annelle moves to the town thinking she’s married, uncertain where her husband is, questioning whether she really is legally married. Adams moves Annelle through the play with perfectly timed growth. Annelle gains confidence from the close-knit group going to extremes as a Bible banging, insistent praying Jesus freak. The others love her anyway, knowing how to handle her which only gives Annelle more steamy buoyancy.

Sally Clodfelter plays Truvy with genuine consistency. She loves what she does, she loves the diversity, and Clodfelter wears the mantle of her character with delightful strength, even though part of Clodfelter certainly wished it were someplace else.

Shelby’s getting married that very afternoon. Deirdre O’Connor gives us an excited bride to be, along with unnerving vulnerability. Her mother, M’Lynn Eatenton, played close to the chest by Kristin Fuhrmann Clark during Act I, finds her way to the heart of her character during Act II, where it really counts.

Act I struggles for energetic momentum surrounded by barbed zingers until a door slams and Terry Ann Watts explodes onto stage as the crusty, defiant, bitter Ouiser Boudreaux. Watts plays Ouiser as though playing a fine tuned violin, feeding energy to the somewhat unnerved cast, while wearing her heart on her sleeve as boisterous, unthinking words fall out of her mouth. She’s not crazy, she insists. She’s “just been in a bad mood for 40 years.”

While Annelle bungles her way through her initial introductions to the ladies, making coffee with hot dog water, Claree, laments she doesn’t like going places alone. She was the Mayor’s wife and was use to special treatment, but he died, leaving her alone. She needs a purpose, but finds investigating on her own intimidating. Carol Rust who plays Claree loses some very funny lines by keeping her too confined wooden and stiff. Claree may be momentarily intimidated, but if she is turned loose, she’ll find her way, as will Rust.

Along with the cutting words exchanged by the women, serious anxiety is introduced with the reality of Shelby’s diabetic status. The doctors have told her she shouldn’t get pregnant. While M’Lynn is gripped in fearful anxiety, Shelby’s attitude is she would much rather have 30 minutes of sheer joy than 30 years of dull existence. This doesn’t set well with M’Lynn, and she has reason for her clutched atmosphere.

Magnificently written, Harling knows and understands small town talk. The lines are choice and play well into the souls of the characters. Truvy’s off-hand comment, “He doesn’t know whether to scratch his watch or wind his butt,” comes out of the blue from this most congenial character, and is so funny, whoever she is talking about gets lost in the system. It hardly matters. It is Ouiser who reminds everyone “a dirty mind is a terrible thing to waste.”

While unleashed words fly through the air, and the women trip over themselves and each other, Shelby’s determination to have a baby creates the very predicament doctors warned her about. Birth puts a strain on her kidneys. She needs a transplant, which M’Lynn proudly donates. Strain created by her death brings out the heart and soul of the characters and in Act II they find strength and courage uncovering their love and support of each other. It is here the actors find their energy and momentum when it counts most.

Directed by Robert Kramer, this production of Steel Magnolias is one of the finest the Denver area has seen. The characters are wondrously chiseled on a delightful set designed by Artistic Director/Producer Rick Bernstein in a down home, down south beauty saloon. The trepidation experienced by the cast Saturday night will fade into oblivion as the cast grows in their familiarity, meeting these six women eyeball to eyeball, flaunting their off the cuff all too honest ground to razor sharpness by a double edged sword disguised as a tongue.

Hysterical on the one side, heart-rending on the other, Steel Magnolias depicts a moment in the life of very real down to earth people living in their small corner of the universe. We honor them. We salute them, even though they may be the very reason some of us avoid beauty saloons with a passion.

Ouiser will crack their whips throwing her tomatoes from her 40 year mad while the others reel from the stark reality of life and death, realizing their petty grievances hold no water to grief itself.

Steel Magnolias is definitely one production that should not be missed. Ouiser knows where you live.